You Know You're a Bigot When...

02/18/2015 11:38 am ETUpdated
Apr 20, 2015

You know you're a bigot when you can't take out the word "Muslim" from a sentence you stated and replace it with "Jew" and still have it be socially acceptable. Let's start out nice and easy. A sentence I get with great regularity:

"You're a Muslim apologist."

Ok, let's try our simple test here:

"You're a Jew apologist."

Wow, that sounded ugly, didn't it? Wait, let's be fair and phrase it slightly differently and see if it gets any better:

"You're an apologist for the Jews."

Nope, that wasn't any better.

So, why are you obviously bigoted when you say it about Jewish people and not equally bigoted when you say it about Muslims? It's partly because there are very few people in America ready to stick up for Muslims. That's, ironically, because they will be called Muslim apologists.

Let's try one more:

"Muslims have to apologize for the actions of other Muslims; otherwise they're just like the bad Muslims."

Oh boy, here we go:

"Jews have to apologize for other Jews; otherwise they're just like the bad Jews."

If you get a chill down your spine with the latter sentence, maybe you should get a chill down your spine for the former one as well. Are we at the point in this country or in the world where Muslims are being treated in the same horribly bigoted ways Jewish people have been in the past? No, we're not there yet. Six million Jews perished in the Holocaust alone. Beware of simplistic analogies. But Sandra Day O'Connor put it best when warning against authoritarianism in America, "We should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings."